Villainesses, Femmes Fatales, Matriarchs and Muses: Du Maurier's Heroines

Dr Serena Trowbridge on stage in Fowey Fown Hall, presenting her talk Villainesses, Femmes Fatales, Matriarchs and Muses: Du Maurier’s Heroines on Thursday 16th May 2024

Du Maurier's novels are filled with strong women, difficult women, interesting and dangerous women. This talk has ambitious scope – or you might say foolish – because I'm planning to take a high-speed ride through the heroine of every du Maurier novel, and think about du Maurier's own approach to womanhood along the way. There are spoilers – I apologise. I'm taking the novels in chronological order, in the hope of seeing some kind of trajectory.

The Loving Spirit was du Maurier's first novel, which she worked on at Ferryside; inspired by a wrecked schooner with a figurehead, the Jane Slade, which she found at Pont Creek. This led her to research local and Slade family history, and clearly enthused by the history of a real woman from Polruan who ran a shipyard after the death of her husband. Working with historical facts, du Maurier wrote later that "I had no control over my characters," suggesting that she is simply recording facts – but of course that's a disingenuous statement; she is creating a story around the facts, and her bringing to life of Janet Coombe draws on many things beside her research.

The title is taken from a poem by Emily Brontë, 'Self-Interrogation'. Du Maurier was inspired by the Brontës (including in Rebecca), including other quotes from Brontë poems throughout this book.

Janet Coombe is in many ways aligned to Cathy in Wuthering Heights, with the moors of Brontë's novel replaced by Janet's fearless love of the sea. She is a woman who ultimately attempts to steer her own course. Her life is restricted both by the time in which she lived, when opportunities for women were few, although she flouts convention in many ways, and by her sex in a universal way: women, du Maurier indicates throughout all her books, can never truly be free.  

She gave to both Thomas and Samuel her natural spontaneity of feeling and a great simplicity of heart; but the spirit of Janet was free and unfettered, waiting to rise from its self-enforced seclusion to mingle with intangible things, like the wind, the sea, and the skies, hand in hand with the one for whom she waited. Then she, too, would become part of these things forever, abstract and immortal.

The young Janet prays, "Please God, make me a lad afore I'm grown," feeling in her desire for adventure and freedom, represented by the sea, that she must be land-bound and restricted by the nature of womanhood.

As a woman, she must marry and bear children – which she does, albeit reluctantly, and the great love of her life is not her husband, but one of her children, Joseph, of whom she might have said, as Cathy did of Heathcliff, 'He is more myself than I am.' So while she chafes against the restrictions of her sex, she must also embrace what it brings her: she becomes the matriarch who builds a family as well as ships, and only a woman could do this. This is echoed in Brontë's poem.

                    Alas – the countless links are strong
                    That bind us to our clay,
                    The loving spirit lingers long
                    And would not pass away

Our clay – our bodies – may frustrate our desires for freedom, as women, but they are also inescapable, and bring forth joy as well as suffering. Marriage and motherhood do not tame her, because this loving spirit exceeds gender roles (quote on slide), and it's telling that later in the novel Janet says, "I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free." She no longer wishes to be a boy; now, she wishes for her youth again.

I'll Never be Young Again is du Maurier's first attempt at a masculine voice; it's narrated by Dick, and the focus is on him throughout; it's one of her few novels that explores male psychology rather than women's lives, although in doing so it offers some glimpses as to why women's lives might be adversely affected by men. Dick is not always a likeable character, seemingly self-obsessed, immature and selfish, his desire to be a writer overtaking the relationships in his life. It strikes me that du Maurier is, perhaps, exploring the idea of the psychology of a writer at this early stage in her career, rather than specifically that of a male writer; whether one agrees or not, it's a truism that writers need to be selfish and focused.

The most significant relationship which Dick has is with Jake, who rescues him from suicide, but the second half of the novel is dominated by his relationship with Hesta, a young woman he meets in Paris. When they first meet, over halfway through the book, Dick describes the evening in a self-consciously writerly style with himself as a romantic hero meeting a pretty girl. We see Hesta through Dick's eyes, though we increasingly see his selfishness. In an early conversation Dick outlines changes he feels needed to society's approach to sex, and when Hesta points out that women will have more babies, he says firmly "Oh no, that will be kept well under control." At that moment, I feel perhaps he is trying to control more than conception. Quickly his impetuous declarations of love overtake Hesta, who is only 19 but sometimes seems far more mature than he is, and he talks her into sex and out of marriage and babies with an infuriating disregard for her wishes. She is interested in being a musician, but soon she is devoting herself to looking after him, while he is becoming bored with her 'dragging around' after him. Once the first passion is over for Dick, he calmly resumes writing, assuming that she will always be there when he wants her, but that she has become part of the furniture and the organiser of domestic life. He won't even talk to her of his writing ambitions, because "She was a woman, and we travelled different ways."

A telling moment is when Hesta dresses as an Apache boy for a party, and Dick feels suddenly more attracted to her. Du Maurier's characters frequently play with gender and attraction, and suddenly Dick's interest is reawakened by her masculine appearance, which signals a turn in Hesta's character; she becomes more masculine, quoting his own words back at him, refusing marriage, and being unfaithful. Yet there is a sense that Hesta has been compelled to put on an act, and is damaged by their relationship, which she ends, while for Dick their relationship was just a 'phase'; it seems that Du Maurier is considering how relationships affect men and women differently. Hesta might seem like a victim for much of the novel, but she grows a new, hard, masculinised shell to escape her fate as a woman.

In The Progress of Julius, masculine ambition is further explored, and even more unpleasant. Julius escapes poverty through deception and ambition, and an ever-growing lust for power. This is not a novel in which women are treated well: the child Julius watches and encourages his father as he kills his mother, and later spends time with child prostitutes in Algiers. One of these, Elsa, he deliberately torments:

The shoulders of Elsa began to shake, and her head bent lower and lower. Julius had to cover his mouth with his hand to prevent himself from laughing. He had discovered a new thing, of hurting the people he liked. It gave him an extraordinary sensation to see Elsa cry after she had been smiling, and to know that he had caused her tears. He was aware of power, strange and exciting.

yet she disguises herself as a boy, which he finds attractive, to travel to England with him. She is a victim, loving a cruel man and longing for a child, whilst fearing that at 18 she is already too old for him and describing herself as 'an ignorant, stupid girl'. She works for Julius, 'the dancing beauty of the Kasbah' becoming a cloakroom attendant, until she dies of TB.

When Julius marries Rachel Dreyfus, he sees her as 'an effective background' who will manage the house and be a good hostess. She has more spark than Elsa, though, quickly irritated by and standing up to him. Her mother describes her as a bluestocking, educated and cultured, but she is still made melancholy on occasion by Julius's behaviour. The birth of their child, Gabriel, is a terrible matter, though both survive, and Julius is glad it's a girl because a boy might be hard to control. His callousness, though, towards Rachel's childbirth experience, to the suicide of her father, to his mistresses, is melted towards his daughter as she grows. Like Janet Combe and Joseph, parenthood changes everything, though Julius's approach is of possession and creation as much as love, making fatherhood a very different thing from motherhood. 

As Gabriel grows, she is spoilt, treated as a grown up, and becomes increasingly like her father, capricious and caring little for anyone or anything, telling her father that she is what he made her. By 18, her will begins to assert itself. She declares to herself that she will always triumph in a battle of wills with her father, 'two branches of the same tree'. After Rachel dies, their struggle continues – and I won't spoil the ending if you haven't read it, but women who stand up to men do not live long. There is no conventional heroine here, but Rachel, in the background, her own dreams abandoned, quietly holds the house and family together, while the fighting spirit of Gabriel is the opposite, a match for a brutal man like Julius.

In Jamaica Inn, Mary Yellan is one of du Maurier's most appealing heroines, independent, determined, brave, and resisting attempts to shape her. Her support for Aunt Patience, and determination for a better life, make her an appealing heroine. Mary gives little away, remaining self-contained so that the reader sometimes needs to guess at her emotions, but allowing us enough to empathise and to actually like her. She both accepts her role and fate as a woman, and yet pushes against it. She is averse to love and romance, telling the vicar, "I don't want to love like a woman or feel like a woman; there's pain that way, and suffering, and misery that can last a lifetime." 'There is no such thing as romantic love,' du Maurier wrote in an essay, echoing feminist social critiques of romance as something which ensnares women and limits their freedom. Yet Mary goes with Jem at the end, though he calls her 'only a woman', as if she is somehow compelled to be with him:

                    Because I want to; because
                    I must; because now and
                    forever more this is where
                    I belong to be.

She has faced sexual threat, mortal danger and loneliness with equanimity, as though these things are inevitable for a woman.

Mary comments that she should have been a boy; that she wants to work on a farm like a man, and she is congratulated for her masculine bravery by Joss and Jem. This is characteristic of so many of du Maurier's women: they reject the conventional femininity of those around them, and survive because they can adapt to a man's world. When despairing after her visit to Launceston, Mary says 'I want a man's life'. She has seen the lives of her mother and aunt, and is holding out for more. More than anything, she is independent; she rejects a suggestion that she dress up like a fine lady, because "I'd rather wear my old clothes and look like myself." Unlike some, she is the same woman – older and tougher, perhaps, but unchanged – from the girl at the start of the book.

Rebecca, this most famous of du Maurier's novels has two heroines – but, like its forerunner Jane Eyre, they present two sides of womanhood. One is the second Mrs de Winter, young and naïve, apparently subservient to Maxim, and both terrified and awed by the shadows of his dead first wife, Rebecca. But what if the new Mrs de Winter is not blind or foolish, but enacting self-preservation? Is this second wife acting in her own best interests, marrying a man who can give her wealth and security? Who can blame a woman for that, in such a society? And what if Rebecca, for all her bad behaviour, does not deserve to die? We see, with the second Mrs de Winter, that she is often happier when Maxim is away from home; that she is uncomfortable with her role as wife, and indeed she indicates a relationship which is asexual, describing herself as a boy: 'I was like a little scrubby schoolboy with a passion for a sixth-form prefect, and he kinder, and far more inaccessible.' Again du Maurier's anxieties about womanhood and gender roles emerge here, contrasted with the sophisticated former wife.

At 18 this half-breed fell in love, as a boy would do, with someone quite 12 years older than himself who was French and had all the understanding in the world and he loved her in every conceivable way up to the age of 23 or so. And in so doing he learned almost all there is to know about that complex thing, a woman's heart. The boy realised he had to grow up and not be a boy any longer, so he turned into a girl, and not an unattractive girl at that, and the boy was locked in a box and put away for ever.

Rebecca's behaviour is masculine, wanting freedom in a way unlikely to be acceptable to most readers. Yet she, too, had to perform the role of the womanly, perfect wife; though we discover that she not only had affairs and lived her own life, she also could not have children. And, in the patriarchal society du Maurier depicts, what use is a woman who cannot give the owner of an estate such as Manderley an heir? That is, of course, what wives are for. So Rebecca has to die: she's no use to her husband, and may well damage his reputation, too. The novel is a warning: badly-behaved, non-conforming women will be disposed of, because they do not support the society in which they exist. Du Maurier would have seen this very clearly, and I suspect this is the source of her concerns with gender roles.

Both of Maxim's wives are described as boy-like, or as wishing to be boys, as if there was something easier, purer, more straightforward about boyhood. Mrs Danvers says, "She had all the courage and spirit of a boy, had my Mrs. de Winter. She ought to have been a boy." Later, Mrs de Winter begs Maxim: "I'll be your friend and your companion, a sort of boy. I don't ever want more than that." So many of du Maurier's heroines are uncomfortable with femininity, the restrictions it imposes, and long for the opposite, to escape the inevitabilities of womanhood, something that du Maurier experienced herself (on slide).

In Frenchman's Creek, Dona St Columb escapes luxurious, stultifying society life in 18th century London, with her well-meaning but somewhat stupid husband and her children, to Navron House in Cornwall, where she enters a different world, with a Frenchman who sails up the creek.

She had consented to be the Dona her world had demanded - a superficial, lovely creature, who walked, and talked, and laughed, accepting praise and admiration with a shrug of the shoulder as natural homage to her beauty, careless, insolent, deliberately indifferent, and all the while another Dona, a strange, phantom Dona, peered at her from a dark mirror and was ashamed.

Dona is a romantic and a realist; she has longed to escape her life and herself as she had become, but she knows that this is a magical period which cannot last. At one point she thinks of another Dona, lying miserably in her London bed, and a third Dona, of the future, 'to whom all this will be a thing to cherish, a thing to remember.' It strikes me that in her life and letters as well as her novels that du Maurier knew what it was to feel divided; so many of her characters are torn between what they want and what they know they must do, and also between different modes of being, much of which is, I think, about concerns around the restrictions of womanhood and oppressive gender roles, with a firm basis in her own experience.   

She plays at being a cabin boy, dressing up and running away, experimenting with freedom, telling William that she wishes she were a man, to take her own ship and go in search of adventure. The suspension of reality that we as readers participate in means that we can be swept away by the romance just as Dona is, but Du Maurier shows that women are more tied than men: romance is nothing compared with one's children and a home one loves, and ultimately we are all tied to reality. But what happens during the novel is the transformation of a heroine; she moves from a flirtatious, spoilt woman to one who, having experienced love and given it up for the sake of her children, is mature, calm, and brave, envisaging her future as a 'gracious matron', who might one day tell her grandchildren of the pirate who escaped – but who, in the night, is a cabin boy who mourns forever the loss of the Frenchman.

Hungry Hill spans the Irish copper-mining Brodrick family over 100 years, with the focus on the male line, since it is on them that a historic curse falls; there is little focus on women, but two, Fanny Rosa and Katherine, both play an ill-fated part in the story. This is a tragic novel, but one senses that rather than a curse it is the hubris of the men who exercise their freedom with bad judgment that causes the tragedies.

Fanny Rosa (after whom the Brownings named a boat) is the wife of the first heir to Clonmere, Greyhound John. Their marriage is seemingly contented and equal, with the 'wild and wayward' Fanny Rosa becoming 'loving and true', creating a happy home, charming everyone. Yet after John's death, she grieves and then hardens, becoming less traditionally feminine, no longer interested in her appearance, but instead focusing on her son, Wild Johnnie, who will inherit Clonmere. Her life is lived through Johnnie, whom she adores and spoils, but ultimately they quarrel, with Johnnie petulant and unkind, describing his mother as a ridiculous middle-aged figure, and she moves to France. Johnnie dies (of course) and Henry, the younger son, supports his mother financially, though surprised how much money she needs. Fanny-Rosa, it seems, has lost her way in life; she gambles, and is in poverty. She brushes off concerns about money, taking everything lightly, but increasingly it becomes clear that, without her husband and beloved eldest son, she has no purpose in life, and has herself been damaged by the curse of the Brodricks. Yet until the end, she 'waves the shabby flag of courage'. Women, it seems, need a purpose in life beyond being a wife and mother, and without it become figures of ridicule, lonely and sad.

In The King's General du Maurier created an unusual heroine in Honor Harris, who is based on a real person and events in Cornwall during the civil war. Though the novel is titled after Richard Grenville, this is Honor's story. In the early chapters she is a spirited, wild girl who rides and climbs trees, and learns about the world, being shocked to discover "that marriage was not the romantic fairy legend I had imagined it to be, but a great institution, a bargain between important families, with the tying-up of property." Like so many du Maurier heroines, she is both a romantic and a pragmatist – though the latter wins out in the end.

She falls madly in love with Richard, but is wheel-chair bound after a riding accident, and (telling the story retrospectively) her bluntness is disarming.

If anyone, therefore, thinks that a cripple makes an indifferent heroine to a tale, now is the time to close these pages and desist from reading. For you will never see me wed to the man I love, nor become the mother of his children. But you will learn how that love never faltered, for all its strange vicissitudes, becoming to both of us, in later years, more deep and tender. . . .

Overcoming initial despair after ending her engagement to Richard, she claims that it is determination, rather than time, which heals, and she becomes the decision maker in the house, a strong, active woman who tells her own story. She is, I think, one of the most heroic of du Maurier's heroines, not only for her actions during the civil war, but also for her stoicism in the face of loss and loneliness. She moves on quickly from her moments of self-pity, admitting that her greatest fault is a lack of humility, and indeed it is her pride and strong will which not only keeps her going but enables her to take part in the war. Moreover, though she refuses marriage, through force of personality she achieves the running of a household, a relationship of sorts with Richard, who is a difficult and often harsh man, and even a kind of motherhood in her care for Richard's son. Du Maurier wrote that she saw herself in Honor, perhaps in part through her determination and relentless pride in the face of adversity. And while Honor is a heroine who does not state a wish she had been born a boy, she thinks and behaves throughout the novel in a way which does not align with contemporary feminine models.

The Parasites is a novel where it is difficult to determine a heroine at all, though the two women represent some of the worst traits of female characters. Maria and Celia are half-sisters, as different from each other as possible; while Maria is an actress, self-confident and always performing a role, Celia is plain and quiet, often overlooked. Neither are heroines in any conventional sense, and both are described as parasites, Maria feeding off her audience, the applause and praise, sustained by vanity, showing off from childhood, while Celia, who was the only one to love her dolls, makes a virtue of self-sacrifice, giving up her opportunities to use her talents in drawing in order to care for her father, and later her niece. Celia is a peacemaker and domestic comfort, although no less parasitic, as she is aware. Yet her passiveness, reacting rather than acting, can become infuriating. The novel is a psychological one, with the flashbacks to childhood explaining much of the development of the siblings, including their half-brother Niall, and Julie Myerson points out that much of it, including all three siblings, may reflect traits that du Maurier saw in herself, as well as taking inspiration from her theatrical father.

With Maria, the reader is privy to some inner thoughts:

I feel it's all wrong to be nervous, said Maria. I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding.

 – the stage fright she hides because of her desire to project a confident persona; some of her tangled feelings for Niall – but there are stream-of-consciousness moments when she remembers, or imagines, and in these moments she is still performing, considering how she looks and behaves; it became impossible for her to take off her mask. And it's clearly a good mask; she's described as 'hard-boiled' and 'not giving a damn'. However, because the novel is narrated as 'we' and 'us' rather than by a single voice – and yet with the perspective of an omniscient narrator - the three siblings become so intertwined that it is difficult to interpret individual thoughts.

My Cousin Rachel is a novel about women's power, and how hard they have to fight for it, narrated by a man who doesn't like or trust women. Philip and Ambrose Ashley are part of a male coterie that describes themselves as woman-haters; consequently, when they fall in love it is all about the glamour and fireworks; the obsession both men feel is encouraged by the widowed Rachel – and why not? Her life, it seems, has been hard, and what other way is there for her to live her life? The shock that Philip feels – stupefaction, he calls it – when he first meets Rachel indicates that in his mind she has been built up as a seductive, immoral monster; her low voice, subdued widow's clothing, and small stature take him by surprise, but Rachel is not a small woman in any other sense. She knows about the power of attraction and how to wield it, and, as for Rebecca, this proves fatal. The novel shows us how a woman can survive in a man's world, and Rachel is no model of propriety, but she is also not a killer.

There are some women, Philip, good women very possibly, who through no fault of their own impel disaster. Whatever they touch, somehow turns to tragedy.

It's a clever novel; it begins, and ends, with the idea of paying the penalty for a crime. Giving us the murderous context makes us suspicious, it sets us up to look for a crime, and along comes Rachel, on the make and unscrupulous. But the ambiguous ending, followed by that final line, 'They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. Not any more', tells us that suspected murderers meet their comeuppance in other ways, and that sometimes they do not get a fair trial. I always felt sympathy for Rachel: so what if she wanted fine things, and to be admired? Didn't she deserve that? She was demonised throughout: the suspicion that she killed Ambrose with poisonous herbs, along with her apparently deceptively quiet demeanour, her sexual attractiveness and her ability to exert power, frames her as a kind of witch – and of course we only ever see Philip's view of her. I have no doubt that she was innocent; it's just that we are too ready to believe an imperfect woman to be guilty.

In Mary-Anne, du Maurier is again working on bringing a historical character to life, but she is related to this one, who was her great-great-grandmother. Mary-Anne Clarke is a distinctive, ambitious heroine, and the novel is also concerned with how a woman might exercise power to survive and thrive in a man's world.

Experience has long informed me that no man ever expresses admiration unless he wants something out of the person admired.
That's a very cynical view. I'm a cynical woman.

The book opens by introducing her smile as the most unforgettable aspect of the heroine, suggesting that her personality must last longer than her looks on which she often traded. She seems a heroine in the mould of Becky Sharp or even Moll Flanders, witty, social climbing, and eventually over-reaching. She sums up her own life thus:

That early training, as a cockney child, sharpened her wit and made her seize her chances: the schooling at Ham put on a pseudo-polish: marriage with Joseph got the worst over young—so much so, that nothing a man could do, now or in the future, would break her heart. As to the rest… all lovers made some mark. She knew how to absorb the benefit and pass it on, be grateful for the teaching. What she had learned from men, not only lovers, was to the purpose in a man-made world. Therefore, become their equal. Play their game, and add to the game the sense of intuition.

Mary-Anne is acutely aware of the differences between the sexes, mapping this onto letters as she learns to read and concludes that the feminine vowels sit alongside the masculine consonants. Her step-father is a printer, and so she helps him and reads politics, current affairs, history, learning that language can be manipulated towards one's own ends, and indeed she writes her memoirs as a way of making money. Determined to better her lot in life, she looks down on those who are compelled by love, though makes a disastrous early runaway marriage, but after this her ambition takes over as she becomes a courtesan and eventually a Royal mistress – and combined with her wit and her resourcefulness, this makes her an appealing character: whatever she does, however immoral, she sees it as necessary to survive.

But once a woman stole the initiative, plundered the perquisites and took the lead, what happened to the globe? The fabric cracked.

The Scapegoat is narrated by John, and we see women through his eyes as he is given the opportunity to take over the life of Jean, his French double. There is Francoise, Jean's wife, Marie-Noel, his daughter, and Blanche, his sister-in-law and also mistress. As with several of the novels narrated by men, their focus is so solely on themselves that the reader finds it difficult to untangle the truth about the women they depict. Yet the women – particularly defeated, sad Francoise, who says she finds her life suffocating – are the victims of male authority. Marie-Noel, close to Jean, is, as Lisa Appignanesi points out, at the pre-pubertal age where she is neither male nor female, yet passionate and ready to love, "she is prescient, and her wishes dream the future all too acutely".

The theme of the doppelganger perhaps removes the emphasis on gendered characters, shifting instead to the doubleness we all contain, a dark side which we'd rather hide, and which is a theme in different ways in many du Maurier novels, and which she commented on as a reflection in this novel of herself and her husband, and human nature in general, and in the novel Bela, one of Jean's mistresses, points this out.

You aren't the only one with a dual personality. We all have multiple selves. But no one avoids responsibility that way. The problems remain to be tackled just the same.

Du Maurier herself felt that her creative side, the writer in her, was driven by a masculine energy which existed, sometimes uncomfortably, alongside the female part of her which loved and was a mother.

Castle Dor is of course a slightly different case since the novel was begun by Q and completed by du Maurier. The novel has been accused of having flat characters, and it is different in many ways to her other novels, and yet the character of Linnet Lewarne contains traces of other du Maurier women. A linnet is a bird often caged in the nineteenth century as a pet, featuring in novels and paintings, and in her dissatisfaction with her life and lack of freedom there are echoes of Frenchman's Creek. I find the relationship between Amyot and Linnet awkward; he seems naïve, she flirtatious, and yet – perhaps because we don't see much of her motivation - Linnet doesn't feel like a du Maurier heroine to me. She is, however, a woman driven by unseen, ghostly forces, which becomes increasingly clear; her excuse to her husband that she fell into Amyot's arms echoes that of Iseult in the mythic stories which haunt the land. She begins as a woman who has 'done very well for herself', marrying Mark, the inn-keeper, who buys her new dresses and adores her, but who is too old and dull for his wife. At the end of the novel, Dr Carfax recalls:

with what fervour and delight had she seized upon life, daring, in thoughtless mood, even to risk marriage with this man old enough to be her father?

It seems harsh to condemn Linnet for her infidelity, perhaps because of her youth and beauty, her love for Amyot, and her eventual death, yet she has moments of unkindness as well as kindness, and sometimes a painful lack of awareness of the effect of her actions.

The Glass Blowers is another historical novel which fictionalises the du Maurier forebears. Sophie Duval is the main female figure, telling the story of the family's experiences in France during the Revolution through letters to her nephew, motivated by a desire to set the story straight, and also a kind of strange pride despite the morally dubious aspects of the history she sets out. 'I have always preferred the truth', she writes, as if to ensure that her version of events will be believed above that of her brother, Robert – although, as Michelle de Kretser points out, Robert is the more compelling character, and 'reaches through time to steal Sophie's story'. Sophie is able to acknowledge the restraints and complexities of the roles forced on women:

how lacking in intuition men could be in persuading themselves that mending some stranger's socks, and attending to his comfort, could content a woman...

describing her sister Edme as having a quick brain and passion for argument, and adding that she should have been a man, because her brains and her tenacity were wasted on a woman. This is perhaps a view which Sophie would apply to herself as well; though both women in some ways exercise their abilities, they remain conscious of restrictions. Moreover, Sophie compares Edme's passion to that of Joan of Arc, and it's interesting that she chose a figure who dressed and behaved as a man in order to achieve her ends, whilst not denying her womanhood.

The Flight of the Falcon is told in the voice of Beo, a tour guide who seems somewhat misogynist from the beginning, scarred by childhood experiences with his brother Aldo, and shamed by his mother's promiscuity. There is no heroine, but there is Carla Raspa, the wife of the Rector of the University and herself a Professor, a woman who is often inscrutable and who appears a sexually voracious femme fatale. Yet Beo's description when he is in her flat

I went through into the bathroom. Jars and bottles were on the shelves, and a dressing-gown had been flung on a stool. A nightgown, hastily rinsed through, hung limply on a hanger above the bath. The bidet was full of soapy water in which a pile of stockings had been left to soak. The sight made me sick. I went back into the kitchen, retching. The disorder, the intimacy, reminded me of hotel bedrooms long ago, in Frankfurt and other cities, when side by side with my mother's underwear, similarly washed and rinsed, would be male socks and handkerchiefs, toothbrushes and hair-lotion. Streaky hairs would be lying in the bath. As a boy of eleven or twelve, my stomach had heaved. The stench of lust pursued me across Germany to Turin. It followed me still…

indicates that there is a disgust with women and their unruly bodies and behaviour that lies beneath his misogyny, and ultimately we pity Carla when her loneliness is exposed by Aldo, and her desire for information and gossip in order to be at the heart of the action. Her desperate neediness prompts only contempt from the brothers. Amanda Craig points out that everyone in this novel is obsessed with someone else, but it is Carla Raspa's misfortune that no one is obsessed with her, and she is ultimately a disposable woman as the brothers continue their psychological battle.

The House on the Strand is one of the novels narrated by a man, and Dick Young and the mad professor Magnus push women aside and ignore them (and, as Celia Brayfield points out, the novel is littered with references to homosexuality). This is another novel where women are incidental to the action for much of the book, and the focus is on the serious man's work of making drugs to take you back in time and eventually kill you. Dick's wife Vita seems to be something of a nuisance to him, interrupting his work, and suffering as he becomes obsessed; he describes her as 'a hothouse flower', but she seems simply exasperated with him. At one point he nearly strangles her, as he tries to reach out to strangle Joanna Champernoun – who is described by Magnus as 'a bitch’, and is, in some ways, a parallel to other women in du Maurier's novels who are depicted as sexually predatory and potentially murderous; there is a touch of Rebecca in her, and even more of Carla Raspa, and Rachel.

Isolda Carminowe, from the fourteenth century parts of the novel, is perhaps the most appealing woman, and certainly holds fascination for Dick. From the first we see of her she is a determined woman, who speaks and acts with authority. She is also unfaithful, beautiful, and angry, challenged by her nasty sister-in-law Joanna. But she is a part of system that manipulates women and makes them pawns in financial and political games.

So much for women's value in other days. Goods reared for purchase, then bought and sold in the market-place, or rather manor. Small wonder that, their duty done, they looked round for consolation, either by taking a lover or by playing an active part in the bargaining over their own daughters and sons.

Dick, to some extent feeling controlled by his wealthy wife who presses him to take a well-paid job in America, perhaps empathises with Isolda. Ultimately, though, women have little control or agency in either time period.

Rule Britannia, du Maurier's last novel, is told from the point of view of Emma, the granddaughter of eccentric elderly actress Mad, and the opening image of the book is of the reassuring image of Emma and Mad holding hands, as though Mad could fix any disaster. Ella Westland suggests that 'Mad's cool and sensible granddaughter plays Wendy to Mad's Peter Pan, the lovable and exasperating fantasist who refuses to grow up.' Yet Mad is a strong leader, determined to protect Cornwall and the Cornish, her aquiline profile and white curling hair as vivid to the reader as her strong theatrical voice demanding information from soldiers and organising the local Resistance, with the help of Emma and her house of adopted boys. She is often brusque, declaring that 'we will never, never give in', whether to enemy invaders or to the nagging pain she is ignoring.

People who are afraid of the dark are afraid of death. We should all take a lesson from the blind. They live with it.

And her morality is sometimes flexible, repeatedly pointing out that these are not normal times and that normal rules do not apply.

At the end of the novel, it is as though her long life had fulfilled its purpose in the events of the book. She is an unusual heroine, eighty years old yet full of energy and strength, determined to fight until the last – she is, in fact, Britannia, defending the shore from enemies.

This has been a very speedy tour of du Maurier's women; I have defined 'heroines' loosely, missed out many important women, themes and contexts, and there is so much more I could have said – but I have covered every novel!

Serena Trowbridge, May 2024.

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